


No Action Hero

by FrodaB



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Gen, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-24
Updated: 2010-06-24
Packaged: 2017-11-01 23:28:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/362462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrodaB/pseuds/FrodaB
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Jim Kirk’s eyes clear as he realizes he’s bloody, covered in vomit, in a dingy alley in the red light district of a backwater planet, and he’s lost his First Officer.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Action Hero

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the where_no_woman first anniversary ficathon. Prompt was Uhura: "Just because I can outsmart you, outfight you, and save my own skin while getting you out of trouble does not mean I'm 'just another one of the guys'."

“Hey there, hot stuff,” he says with a bloody smile, one side of his face turning into a mass of purple bruising. 

Uhura’s mouth forms a thin line and she crosses her arms over her chest as McCoy kneels down next to Kirk, avoiding the pool of vomit nearby.

He’s completely wasted, and clearly got into a fight, so he’s not very lucid.

“Dammit, Jim, snap out of it.” McCoy shakes him a few times, curses a few more times, and finally Uhura kneels close.

“With all due respect, Captain -” And she slaps his face.

“Ow! Hey, what was that for? Just ‘cause I was lookin’ at yer legs again…”

Her voice cuts sharply through the putrid night air. 

“Where is Spock?”

Jim Kirk’s eyes clear as he realizes he’s bloody, covered in vomit, in a dingy alley in the red light district of a backwater planet, and he’s lost his First Officer.

\----------

Shore leave is supposed to be _relaxing_ , Uhura finds herself thinking bitterly as they sit around in a conference room, discussing their plan of action on how to track down Commander Spock.

Then she gets the message alert on her padd, and it all goes even more to hell.

\----------

_Give us the medicine you carry, and we shall return your officer,_ provides the Universal Translator, and everyone in the room frowns at the image of the vaguely-humanoid person over the vid feed, with lots of brown fur on its face. 

If the “medicine” is the vaccine they’d been ordered to take to Centauri IV, no one outside Starfleet command should know about it. 

“I gotta think about it,” Kirk says, jaw clenched. 

_Think quickly._ The feed cuts out.

“How do they even -”

Kirk cuts off McCoy’s query with a wave of his hand. “Doesn’t matter. The point is, we’re not giving them shit, and we’re getting Spock back. Uhura, you’re with me.”

“Jim, you’re in no shape to -”

“He got taken on my watch, I’m going to get him back, Bones.” His eyes flick to Uhura for a split second, and she sighs.

\----------

“What _exactly_ were you doing here, anyway, besides looking for trouble?” She double-checks the phaser at her side, making sure it’s still set to stun. She hates the damn things, but now isn’t the time to complain about Starfleet firearms policy.

“Just… stuff. You know. Captain-First Officer bonding stuff. Don’t worry, I wasn’t trying to get him a hooker.” Kirk is the only person Uhura has ever known who has the ability to look both old, tired, _and_ boyish and inexperienced, all at once.

It’s both scary and reassuring.

“So, what, you play chess with him and he agrees to visit bordellos with you?” 

“Ah, something like that.” 

\----------

The second message alert shows up as Uhura is scanning the faces of passersby just outside a street market.

They duck into an alley and hunch over her padd as the video pops up, showing Spock’s face. There’s a trickle of green blood near his left eyebrow, and his jaw is bruised, but he is, of course, sitting with his back ramrod-straight, his eyes clear and focused ahead.

_Deceive us, and we will harm him,_ the translator provides, and Uhura has to swallow the bile back as they break two of Spock’s fingers. He flinches, but doesn’t make a sound, and she knows that he’s focusing on regulating his breathing.

She thinks they could all use some practice at meditation as she watches Kirk storm up and down the alley, cursing.

\----------

She always feels so out of place in civilian clothes. She has to try and remember to slouch a little, let the brim of her hat sit low so it obscures her eyes. She prefers the Starfleet uniforms. They give her a sense of security, belonging, and authority. In civilian clothes, she’s just some woman in a crowd. 

“I’m sorry, you know,” Kirk is saying. He’s actually drinking the alcohol he’s bought, while Uhura is swallowing enough that it sits on her breath and dumping the rest on the floor when no one is looking. “For losing him like that.”

“I’m not the one you should be apologizing to.”

\----------

The third message alert appears as they’re questioning an informant in a motel room. 

Uhura leaves Kirk to look threatening at the furry little man, and shuts herself in the bathroom.

_You have twenty-four Terran hours to bring us the medicine._

Spock’s nose is bleeding now, too, and he makes a very small noise of pain when they break his arm.

Ten minutes later, Kirk opens the door.

“Lieutenant, I need you out here - shit.”

She looks at him, wiping her eyes. “You look like you’ve never seen someone crying before, sir.”

He looks so uncomfortable. “I hadn’t, uh. Really thought of you as the type.”

“There’s a _type_ of person who cries now? I missed that memo.”

She gets up and glances at herself in the mirror. “I thought you knew that showing emotion isn‘t always a weakness.”

When she walks back into the room, red-eyed, and points her phaser at the informant’s head, he tells them exactly where to find Commander Spock.

\----------

There is nothing graceful at all in the way Kirk fights. He just gets the job done as best he can, which is something Uhura appreciates, though it can be difficult to silence the guards when he wants to just run in screaming, firing his phaser at anything that moves.

He also, despite his unfortunate habit of ending up dangling from high places by his fingernails, seems to have a serious lucky streak. Something they find themselves needing a lot. 

Like when he accidentally elbows one guard in the face as he’s subduing another, saving Uhura from getting shot.

Or when he quite literally _stumbles_ into the room where Spock is being held.

The noise Uhura can’t quite suppress when she sees him is even more agonized than she would like to admit. He looks worse than in the last video message, and his eyes aren’t quite as focused, his breathing not quite as steady. 

He still manages to shoot three more guards on their way out of the building, though.

\----------

McCoy looks downright horrified at the sight of his First Officer, and Uhura gets the feeling it’ll be a long time before he calls Spock a “green-blooded hobgoblin” again. 

She sits in sickbay with him for four hours before Kirk shows up. “Get some sleep, Lieutenant. My turn to keep watch. I’ll let you know if he wakes up.”

“He won’t for at least another twelve hours,” she says calmly. “And from now on, stick to the chess games.”


End file.
